Vengeance
by Ignabar
Summary: On hiatus.
1. Hypocrisy

**This is my try at the well-worn path of fukufics. Watch as I muck around in the universes of my choice, using the black hole of my ego to suck everyone and everything into my image. I am the pinnacle of arrogance, not only for creating my own universe, but stealing _someone else's_. The audacity! I do not own either Ranma 1/2 or Bishojo Senshi Sailor Moon, which belong to Rumiko Takahashi and Naoko Takeuchi. Enjoy!**

XXX

"Company halt," Ranma Saotome called to the procession of men behind him. "Take a break, guys." The twenty or so bounty hunters under his command and Akane Saotome, his wife, tentatively stopped walking and sat down heavily in the shade of a stand of trees. Ranma himself remained standing, undaunted by the day of hard marching. After the sub-atmospheric cruiser they'd been traveling in malfunctioned and crashed in the western wilds of China, all of them had been making as best time they could for the nearest spaceport of Xining. Unfortunately, the bloody Bayankala mountain ranges were taking their toll on the battle-hardened veterans, even Akane, who was certainly no slouch when it came to the physical arts. But Ranma was a man possessed.

"Dear, why are we stopping here? There's a nice series of springs just down in that valley, and it's far too hot to just march all day." Akane employed her most devastatingly effective weapon, her puppy dog eyes, and Ranma felt his inner defenses weakening. That overwhelming cuteness threatened to destroy his sanity should he so much as _consider_ ignoring her demands.

"Because these mountains are cursed," he said weakly, although with some measure of hard seriousness. "I've heard legends, rumors. They say there're fiery demons dwelling in Jusendo, vicious kappa who live in the depths of the lakes, an entire tribe of man-hating Amazon warriors living in their own filth. You'd fit right in, tomboy," he added, teasingly.

"You really need to stop hitting the bars at Olympus Mons. I don't know what they serve on Mars, but it's stronger than sake." Akane waved at the mercenaries behind them, the poor unfortunates who signed on for the adventure and got stuck with a Qinghai nature walk. If nothing else, they deserved to be rid of the two Saotomes for a little while. Akane looked over the edge of the bluff, searching until her eyes alighted on a wooden hut constructed in the near corner. "Hey, look! There are people living down there! We should go talk to them."

The puppy dog eyes started up again, and Ranma folded like a house of cards caught in a hurricane. "Alright, we'll go, you macho-sexless-tomb-"

Akane pulled her husband into a deep, passionate kiss, effectively cutting off the end of his sentence. "And you're a pervert, but you're _my_ pervert. Come on now, I think we're freaking your friends out." Laughing, she ran to the end of the edge of bluff and bounded recklessly down the steep slope of the valley towards the poor, unsuspecting targets of her attention. Ranma watched for a couple seconds affectionately, and then turned around to face the sweaty and exhausted people, who seemed perfectly happy with their shade, thank-you-very-much. "Eh-heh," he said sheepishly, "I'll just go get her. Wait here until I get back." Ranma skipped the jumping portion and simply executed a swan dive into Jusenkyo, reveling in the feel of wind blowing through his hair. Akane skidded to a stop just before the primitive door to the hut and watched, astonished, as Ranma hit the ground with a roll. It was only a vertical drop of about twenty meters, and Saotome hopped back to his feet laughing.

Ranma knocked hard on the door to the **#Guide's office#**, as the sign pounded in the ground proclaimed in messy Chinese pinyin. The door opened, revealing a mildly overweight native wearing an olive green uniform and beret, and a nametag identifying him as the **#Jusenkyo Guide#** in the same handwriting. "Welcome, honoured visitors!" he exclaimed in slightly accented Japanese, "This legendary cursed training grounds of Jusenkyo Springs. You come here for training?" Ranma nodded and accepted the guide's invitation to come inside. Akane shook her head vigorously and ran off to examine the actual site of the springs.

"Thank you for inviting me into your home," Ranma said politely. "My company was simply passing through after a minor accident with our cruiser, and we happened to break here on the way back to Silver Millennium territory." The room was sparsely furnished, with two futons, a small kitchen, an outdated refrigerator humming in the corner. But the most interesting bit by far was the wall-mounted map of the springs on the wall. Most of them were unmarked, but a few had gigantic red pins pushed through, with hanging strips of paper that recorded, apparently, the first thing to drown in that spring. Ranma shivered. What a weird hobby.

"You not here to train, yo here to cool off in our springs, right?" Ranma nodded absently. '_How did a woman even drown in a spring? They're supposed to be shallow, I think.'_ The pins suddenly seemed even more ominous than before, like tiny omens of doom for each and every person who entered the valley of cursed springs. _Cursed_ springs…

"How are these springs cursed, again?" It fell from his tongue heavily, and even as the guide was answering him, Ranma was walking stridently for the door.

"Honoured guest, these springs are fed by both water and the magic of the Earth Kingdom. Each draws the spirits of an unlucky soul to them and immerses them, and then anyone who falls into the spring is cursed to take on the form of… honoured guest?"

XXX

Akane surveyed the springs. There were narrow strips of land between each pool, the grass ground away by some long-gone force and yet to return. The 'training' aspect of the area was evident from the massive bamboo stalks hammered into the ground in the centres of each spring. Akane let her boundless imagination take over, allowing her to see the battles that may have happened, between old rivals, between adventurous sparring partners, between master and apprentice. She turned and spun between the poles, dancing to beat only she could hear and growing gradually closer to a certain extra-wide pool just feet away. Her eyes glazed over, one could almost hear a demonic laugh as a fatal misstep sent Akane plunging into the cold water.

Evidently, her initial judgment of the area was dead wrong; the pools were _very_ deep. The sunlight was fading rapidly as ghostly force gripped Akane's ankles and dragged her gently towards the silt at the bottom of the spring. Akane Saotome's penultimate thought was _'I can't swim!'_

Her last was _'Ranma…'_

XXX

_'Akane can't swim!'_ Ranma thought frantically as he broke from his brisk walk into a dead run. A splash from a far-off pool drew his attention, making his heart stop. Tracking the noise, he jumped fluidly from the ground to the top on the nearest bamboo shoot and kept on running, jumping rapidly from bamboo to bamboo. When he got to the pool, just able to make out the spinning form of his wife, Ranma shucked his red shirt and dove headfirst into the pool.

Halfway down, a wave of concentrated Earth magic washed out of the bottom of the spring, pushing Ranma back towards the surface. Swearing bitterly in his mind, the Saotome doggedly inverted himself and fought against the current, heedless of the magical changes sweeping through his body. Reaching out one hand, Ranma swiped at Akane's halo of hair, but came up short. Running dangerously low on air, he managed to get a firm grip on the floating black strands and yanked hard. The two of them shot out of the pool like a cork out of a champagne bottle.

Ranma was unsure of how long he was unconscious, but when he came to, the concerned face of the Jusenkyo guide loomed over his, swimming in and out of focus. "Wha… my head," he said blearily. "Wha' happn'd?" He rolled over onto his side, and frowned when _something_ hit the ground. Something that really had no right to be there. Slowly, Ranma brought one hand up and poked her breast. "Oh shit!" she exclaimed, hauling herself to her feet. She stumbled, but was soon up and running again, focused on the motionless form of his beloved, wet clothes plastered to her frame flatteringly.

Because if the springs bestowed the form of that which drowned in them, and Ranma had become a girl, then the spring she'd jumped in had previously drowned-

'_No, please don't be dead! Oh pleasenopleasenopleaseno- NOOOOOOOOOO!"_

Ranma grabbed Akane's shoulders and shook her. _Hard_. "Akane?" she asked loudly, desperately. "Akane, answer me! ANSWER ME!" she screamed, holding one hand to her throat to check for a pulse. One that was not forthcoming. "OH GOD PLEASE! AKANE!" Ranma broke down in gentle, disturbingly feminine sobs on her beloved, deceased Akane.

XXX

"Silence, Ranma Saotome, or you will be found in contempt of this court," Queen Serenity said mockingly. The young man in the accused box fell sullenly quiet, glaring up with dark rage at the three people before him. He'd never met any in person, but the face of Princess Serenity II was stamped on every coin minted in the solar system. The princess sat on a small wooden stool to the left of her mother. Queen Serenity resided behind a miserably small chrome desk, covered with a few pertinent papers, and she looked thoroughly bored. But on her right was her most trusted advisor, Sailor Pluto. It was the green-haired senshi who'd summoned Ranma to the aid of the falling empire in the first place.

One could hardly call it a trial. One moment, Ranma had successfully activated the complex reincarnation device and input coordinates for mainland Japan, several years in the future, and the next a gas canister was crashing through the apartment window and shock troopers wearing gas masks and moon kingdom insignias were breaking down his door. After awakening in some godforsaken cell in the Palace of the Moon, Ranma was escorted to this claustrophobic little courtroom to be judged and found guilty. Or so he thought.

In reality, there had been no trial. Ranma was unsure why the princess was there, but evidently the Queen had her priorities severely out of whack. How else could she possibly attend the sentencing for a petty crime while the Moon Kingdom burned? Then it hit him: if Sailor Pluto had been the one to request his aid in the beginning, and it was normally her job to administer this justice, perhaps her liege was worried…

"Hey Pluto," he called lazily, "weren't you the one who wanted my help here? Something about your military commanders being incompetent?" Princess Serenity looked at the Guardian of Time incredulously, as if it was beyond her to conceive that the Kingdom wouldn't recover from the betrayal of Beryl and the Earth Kingdom. "Setsuna, I know he's supposed to be a brilliant tactician, but the Saotomes aren't exactly the most, uh, _reliable_ people in the galaxy.

"Well it's true!" she exclaimed, seeing Pluto raise one eyebrow in condescending disbelief. "I mean, his father kept hold of a group of asteroids for a bit, but he got eaten by a rabid panda on Jupiter. Don't give me that look, it's not funny." The princess frowned and turned back to the faintly bored Ranma.

Queen Serenity rounded on her advisor in anger. "You contracted help without consulting me? An act of rebellion against the crown during wartime is treason, Sailor Pluto. I demand an explanation for this behavior of yours!"

Ranma leaned forward as far as the small box allowed, genuinely interested in what the enigmatic Setsuna Meioh had to say on the subject. Beyond an initial, nondescript but desperate plea for as much manpower as he could muster, the intents of the last senshi were a mystery to him as well. The clock hung on the back wall of the antechamber stopped ticking.

"May I be blunt, Your Majesty? We are fighting a loosing war. We are besieged on all fronts by the Dark Kingdom's youma, we suffer defection and betrayal from nearly half of our senators, and the Sailor Senshi will only be able to hold off our attackers with magic for so long. I estimated that we had scant months left before we would have to resort to using the Ginzuishou, and that time is rapidly approaching." The royal advisor took a deep breath. "Hence Ranma Saotome. The men under his command are some of the most highly trained mercenaries that money can buy, and would have made a valuable addition to our flagging troops.

However, the main reason I contacted him was because Ranma Saotome is a military genius. His track record literally speaks for itself. He was in charge of the Heavy Brigade in the recent battle for a series of settlements on Saturn's second ring, and despite his family's, ah, _failings_, we can't afford to be choosy with our allies at this point. I propose that we grant a pardon for the use of relatively low-class contraband technology in lieu of service for the duration of this war."

Ranma buried his face in his hands. Not a stranger to the diplomatic field, Sailor Pluto's obvious mistake was appealing to logic in a monarch under pressure. Not only that, but belittling her ability to effectively fight off the invaders, right or not, had basically sealed his fate. "Your Majesty, I-"

"Hold your tongue, criminal. We are still deliberating your sentence." Princess Serenity II cringed at her mother's tone. "You are guilty of heresy by way of suppressing the flow of souls to the world, and as such you will be-"

"Serenity, I implore that you _consider_ my proposal. Even without a pardon, Ranma Saotome may still be of use to us."

Queen Serenity was livid. "You question my reign, Meioh? I am perfectly competent in the defense of my own territory from godless monsters and petty infidels, and we do not require the aid of _bounty hunters_. Should the remainder of those formerly in Saotome's employ still be on the moon, I will commission warrants for their arrest following this meeting. Do not presume to question me in the future."

At this point, her daughter chose the most inopportune time to chime in. "Mother, we should finish this posthaste, our kingdom needs us." The Queen nodded sagely. "Sentencing, then. Ranma Saotome, you are found guilty." Ranma could hear the impatience in her voice, like the opinion of her daughter had totally reversed the direction of her train of thought.

"You are sentenced to the Void for a period of time as yet undetermined, for reflection on your crimes against the universe. May God have mercy on your soul." She raised one palm, revealing the shining Imperial Crystal. The Princess and Sailor Pluto backed away slowly as the gem started to glow brighter and brighter, the dust particles in the air around it glittering prettily before igniting in a small firestorm around Serenity's fist.

"You _hypocrites_," Ranma snarled, throwing himself against the restraining plexiglass. "Magic is evil and wrong only when it suits you, but now that your little fiefdom is collapsing, suddenly it's your divine right to push back with the bloody _Silence Glaive_?" Seeing Setsuna's shocked face and Sailor Moon's horrified expression, he snorted contemptuously. "Yeah, I know what really happened to Planet Janus. You killed, what, twelve trillion people, and you call _me_ a criminal?"

Suddenly, a white beam of light lanced out of the Ginzuishou and hit Ranma square in the chest, enveloping his entire body in searing radiance. The last thing he saw was the eternally sorry expression of the Senshi of Time, and then the whole world was white.

XXX

Queen Serenity barely got one foot out the door when one of her generals, Sailor Moon guesses it was probably Endymion, teleported her to the command room of the palace. She frowned at the mortified Sailor Pluto and asked, "Why did Luna ask Queen Serenity to attend this matter personally? Really, reincarnation is pretty trivial."

Pluto swallowed hard and flicked through the possibilities in her head. "Uhhh… My best guess is that she wanted to make sure he was locked up in the first place, considering that if I had my way, Ranma would be a free man by now. As for _why_, maybe she just wanted to test the sealing technique. We both know she's never going to kill anyone herself, so if it comes down to self defense, our illustrious Queen is going to banish them to a sealed dimension for all of eternity. Makes you wonder what the difference is, eh?"

Sailor Moon turned it over in her head. "Great. Wait a minute, isn't one of mom's backup plans reincarnation? Wow, no wonder he called us hypocrites!"

Sailor Pluto glanced over her shoulder at the empty hallway, and then leaned in close to whisper in the heiress' ear. "Permission to speak candidly, Your Highness? Your mother isn't exactly stable right now. Somebody daring to copy her plans, or any other triviality that you or I might ignore, especially given this crisis, will set her off."

The Princess clapped her hands over her ears and started humming the national anthem nervously. "_Setsuna!_ Please keep your opinions to yourself!" Sailor Pluto sighed and teleported away to oversee the final touches to the Time Gate. Pluto's engineer's had made their crowning achievement in time technology for the express use of future Sailor Plutos, so the current one made as much time as she could to observe their progress, in case repairs had to be made. Sailor Moon sat down in the hallway and stared blankly at the wall opposite her until the Palace of the Moon began to shake with the force of dropped bombs.

XXX

After the world went white, it never went back. Ranma recovered from the shock fairly quickly and waved his arms around experimentally in front of his face. Then he looked around. Terrifying whiteness stretched as far as the eye could see, until a sharp black line running close to the ground marked the near edge of the pocket dimension. Hurrying up to the wall and feeling it for weaknesses, Ranma turned right and started running as fast as he could. Hours and days didn't seem quite right in this place, because he seemed to be awake for much longer than was normal. He didn't need to eat or drink, or apparently use the bathroom either.

Eventually, Ranma realized that he'd gone fully around the interior of the giant white cube. Not infinite, then, but big enough to give the illusion. Akane was dead, and nothing else occupied the place, as far as he could see. That was okay, Ranma reasoned. If he was to live out the rest of his life in this weird prison, at least he still had the Art. The young warrior had heard tales of martial masters who lived for centuries on mountain peaks in states of meditation.

What kind of mastery that would take, and how long it would take to reach without formal instruction eluded the Saotome, but that was okay too. _'After all,'_ he thought with a grin, _'I have time enough to think. Time enough to master the Art, time enough to be the best. Time enough for anything.'_ With that, he began one of the most basic katas he knew, working up through the ranks until he was at his pinnacle. Then he stopped, and did it again. And again. _'Good enough place to start.'_ It was going to be a _long_ eon.

XXX

It was a mistake on the behalf of one of the shock troopers. One of them, in brushing past the strange and esoteric device with its multitude of stainless steel capsules and empty rubber tubing, stopped its ominous flashing lights and glowing power crystals. After that, the technology endured the long and terminally boring process of being sealed away within the Moon Kingdom's vaults. Vaults that just so happened to be blast proof.

The timer on the device was set to reincarnate the soul and memories of Akane Tendo in the year 964 SM, later in that year. After the eventual fall of civilization in the solar system, the royal storehouses remained untouched. And years in the future, the device began to buzz again, searching for an ideal host for its troubled soul on the planet far below. You see, the timer hadn't been stopped. The display was cracked, and the power source hidden, so none of the technicians who'd commissioned it even suspected that the device was now set to go off in 1964, C. E…

**I hope this actually turns out right. My first try and all that. R&R please!**


	2. Dangerous Times

Tokyo, Minato ward. Two cats crash to earth, one talks, one doesn't. One that talks creates a super hero, one that doesn't is taken in by a shelter. One that talks reveals the secrets of an ancient empire, one that doesn't escapes and is chased by a group of boys down a street. Artemis' story is not here. Luna's is. The male feline advisor to the Queen was rescued by her daughter's reincarnation. Usagi Tsukino, incorrigible crybaby and all-around 'meatball-head' takes the leap of faith, and at Luna's urging, becomes Sailor Moon.

Tokyo, Nerima ward. Go train stations are spaced evenly throughout Tokyo to facilitate quick travel between wards and out into the rest of Japan. One such station, fairly quiet that evening, had an empty men's bathroom. The third stall's door was shut and locked from the inside, sporting an 'out-of-order' sign that the janitors had yet to take down. A foot over the toilet, a ball of white energy coalesced, triggered by the sudden usage of Ginzuishou energy, and promptly vomited Ranma Saotome into the toilet bowl. Woken violently from his sleep, Ranma shook his head slowly, opening his eyes and surveying the first non-white thing he'd seen in centuries. The light blue stall was covered in graffiti on the inside, and a cursory glance down informed Ranma that the water had soaked through her shoes and activated the curse.

Walking carefully out of the stall, absorbing more of the new environment, Ranma was about to turn the hot water faucet on and reverse the curse when a man in a business suit arrived to use the lavatory. Seizing the opportunity while the man processed a girl being in the men's washroom, she asked, "Excuse me, sir, but could you tell me what year it is?"

"I'm sorry, what?"

"What year is it? I am afraid that I may have been imprisoned for a mite longer than the Queen intended. Has the Moon Kingdom fallen in my absence?"

"It's, uh, 1980. I'm not really sure about this Moon Kingdom… Listen, you, um, you really shouldn't be in the men's bathroom. It's for men. Uh, exclusively. I-"

Ranma flicked open the hot water and stuck her hand underneath, stunning the man into silence with the change in hair colour and gender. "Thank you," he said curtly striding out into the station. The train wasn't moving, even though nobody moved to board or disembark. Ranma consulted the overlay map of the subway system, which was familiar, and of Tokyo city, which was not. _'It seems that not only has the Kingdom of the Moon fallen, it is also forgotten'_, Ranma mused. _'I suppose it might be prudent to obtain money first, and then see if there is _any _way I can take my revenge.'_

Before he married Akane, before he became the best of the Art, before he piloted beat-up secondhand shuttles across the galaxy with a ragtag group of bounty hunters in search of, amongst other things, adventure, money, and women, Ranma Saotome was a mechanic. Genma Saotome was an unrepentant alcoholic from Mars, who married his sweetheart from Saturn, Nodoka. During the many, many years when Genma labored under tha constant pall of varying drunkenness and hangover, Nodoka bussed tables at a local restaurant while Ranma did repairs for hovercars at a garage. It was a place to start, at least.

Only, maybe that was going to be a problem. As soon as Ranma poked his head out of the subway, it became apparent to him that not only was he _not_ on the moon, but that the empire to usurp the Earth Kingdom hadn't yet rediscovered antigravity engines. The sky suddenly broke out in rain, and Ranma viciously kicked a lamppost. Sighing in defeat, the redheaded warrior resigned herself to sleeping in the rain yet again.

_'Here I am, far off in the future, with no money and no skills worth mentioning. No shelter, no food, no prospects. Funny, my best bet now is probably to try and rob a bank.'_ Ranma laughed in her head. _'Ranma Saotome, now working for food! Ha, Akane could see me now!'_ That sobered her immediately. Then she backtracked.

Just up the road was exactly what she was looking for: 'Ucchan's Okonomiyaki.' The open sign was still shining neon in the fading light, so Ranma could clearly see the 'HELP WANTED' poster taped to the frosted glass of the window. Making a split-second decision, Ranma walked up, ripped the sheet of paper off the window, and stepped out of the rain.

Inside, the small restaurant was brightly lit and sparsely decorated. A few landscape paintings hung on the whitewashed walls, and a waitress was bent over a table, washing it to a shine. Ranma gave her a curt nod and sat down at the counter. At the grill was a boy in his mid-teens, wearing a chef's outfit and hat. A massive metal spatula was slung over his shoulder, reaching nearly from floor to ceiling. He turned at the sound of Ranma's footsteps and came across to where she was sitting.

"Welcome to Ucchan's," he said, "I'm Ukyo and that is my first and only waiter, Konatsu." He pointed at the waitress, who looked up and smiled at Ranma. "What can I get for you?"

Ranma laid the wanted ad on the table. "I'm looking for a job. My name is Ran-Ranko," she lied, making the name up on the spot. "I don't really have an previous experience, but I'm a fast learner."

Ukyo appraised her, then went in the back room to get something. Konatsu stopped polishing the table and sat down at the counter next to Ranma. "So, where do you live?" she asked casually. "I don't think I've met you before, and Nerima isn't exactly a big place." Ranma shrugged. "I'm new here," she said, truthfully. Ukyo came back holding a sheet of paper. He set it down on the counter in front of Ranma and pulled out a pencil, which he placed on top.

"This is just a form. I have to know if you have any diseases or allergies, if you have any references, and any other skills. Contact information here, available working hours here, then sign here, and you're in!" Ukyo beamed. "Welcome to Okonomiyaki Ucchan's, sugar."

Konatsu looked at the paper as soon as Ranma's pencil stopped moving. "Afternoons open, no contact information, no references… hey, you're a martial artist too?" Ranma had hesitated at the 'Other Skills' section, and then scrawled 'Martial Arts' in the blank space. Ukyo spun the paper around and ran his finger down the list. "Okay, not great, but promising. Martial arts is good, we're big on that sort of thing in Nerima. Don't you have a cell phone or something?"

Ranma coughed awkwardly. "Um, I was wondering if I could work for room and board. That is… if it's not too much trouble? Like I said, I'm new here."

Konatsu smiled wide. "So, you're a wandering martial artist with nothing to her name, looking for a job?" She nodded to the chef.

"Sure thing, sister. You can have the room next to Konatsu's. Be a dear and roll out the extra futon, Konatsu?"

"Sure thing, Kuonji!" the waitress gushed, darting into the back room and presumably up the stairs to the second floor.

"Want some dinner?" Ukyo said casually, turning on her grill. "Normally I only serve okonomiyaki, but I can cook some decent grub." Ranma's stomach growled with the repressed hunger of an eternity without food,, and she nodded sheepishly. "Thank you."

While she threw together a stew with the day's leftover ingredients, Ukyo said, "So, you enrolled in school yet? Even if you've never been, or already graduated for that matter, you should go. The principal is a madman, it's like he has some sixth sense for truancy. For that matter, all of the Kuno's are absolutely batshit crazy. You'll meet them eventually, they're the ones who make Nerima dangerous. The principal's the safest of them, he's head-on insane. He came back from Hawaii with some kind of obsession, 'cause there's this palm-tree hell in the basement. Furinkan high is an absolute madhouse because of him, only the inmates are runnin' the asylum, if you catch my drift. That's why we're all fighters here."

She grabbed a carrot and started slicing wafers into the simmering water in the pot. "Kodachi goes to this prestigious all-girls school. I doubt she's actually smart enough for it to matter, but the Kuno's are all loaded. It's why they get away with everything. She's a botanist, only she breeds the most dangerous plant you can name and then some. She's always armed with some kind of bio-weapon, and she rigs the sporting events at her school by attacking the opposing team the night before. Don't really know much about her."

Ukyo dropped a lid on the pot with a _clang_, and Ranma realized that she had almost fallen asleep on the countertop. Jolted awake, she tried to affix a semblance of interest on her face before Ukyo turned around.

"The worst is Tatewaki, by far. He thinks he some kind of bloody samurai warrior, and that he's kami-sama's gift to women. What's worse, all three of them are actually good fighters, even though he uses a bokken. People call him the 'Blue Blunder,' it's kinda complicated… want some water?"

Ranma took the proffered glass and sipped gratefully. "Sorry, I'm really thirsty. Been a long day." Ukyo nodded in understanding and continued. "Get this: last year, a friend of mine turned him down for a date, so the next day he got on the intercom and told the whole school that anyone who wanted to date her had to defeat her, only the morons at my school decided that meant that she _would_ date them if they defeated her, so now Akane has to-"

Ranma sputtered and choked mightily on the water. ""Ak- Akane?" she said dazedly. "Wh- wha… oh, sorry. I used to have a really good friend named Akane." She set the water back down, decidedly less hungry. The pot of stew boiled over, and Ukyo moved to shut off the burner with his spatula. "Wanna talk about it?" he said gently. Ranma shook her head.

Konatsu burst out of the back room. "I set up the guest room, Ukyo. Miss Ranko, it's the second one on the left." Ranma noticed that she was now wearing a scabbard replete with a short katana. The kunoichi followed her gaze to her own hip and laughed. "This? I always sleep armed, Ranko. Nerima is a dangerous place, if you let your guard down, you get sent to the hospital."

Ukyo served the soup; it was good, but Ranma suspected that the okonomiyaki for which the restaurant was probably better. Konatsu down all of hers in one massive slurp, whilst Ukyo dumped the pot in the sink and started washing. "I'm going to register you at my school, starting the day after tomorrow, Ranko," Ukyo said over her shoulder. "We'll all go shopping for some new clothes, since you don't have any, and buy a hat or something. The principal won't go after you if he _thinks_ you have no hair."

Ranma did not understand that, nor did she want to.

"I'm going to bed," she said flatly. "See you both tomorrow." Ranma went upstairs, showered ecstatically for the first time in kami-knows-how-long, and cried herself to sleep.

XXX

On the very edges of the galaxy, the fate of Pluto becomes apparent. Rather than directly suffering the crippling attacks that wiped life off of the other planets, moons, and rings at the end of the Silver Millenium, their citizens of the last republic suffered a much more horrifying fate. Being rather a glorified asteroid, rather than a planet, the magically retained atmosphere above Pluto's crust dissolved over the course of two panic-filled, terrifying weeks.

Morbid as it may be, this tidbit of information is especially important because the lack of wide-scale damage meant that the Kuiper Galactic Defense System remained online and functional even after the deaths of its operators. The myriad cannons mounted on asteroids orbiting the sun at billions of kilometers were the main factor in deterring massive alien armadas from assaulting the fledgling earth.

There were, however, the occasional scientific research vessels, manned by a skeleton crew and one or two xenobiologists, which made it through the net to study the indigenous flora and fauna of the third rock, especially the dominant sentient species _homo sapiens_. Fortunately, those that were sighted by especially sharp-eyed humans were usually dismissed as hoaxes.

Cannon G7602's internal receiver flashed red and powered up the internal A. I. and targeting system. The external monitor briefly displayed a cartoon man waking up, before the hurried readings broke its normally good humor. The charge for the ion stream capacitor that powered the main AA barrel was reading low on power, so G7602 resolved to try and take out the threat with one shot. Swiveling to face the blackness of space, the lone cannon prepared to blast the oncoming vessel into oblivion…

A silvery shape appeared in the distance, growing larger at an alarming rate. G7602 estimated that it was slowing from faster-than-light speeds, and therefore would be at a disadvantage in the firefight. Without the power to halt its momentum, the starship would be unable to dodge the laser barrage that was fixing to come, and certainly wouldn't have the chance to retaliate. The cartoon man reappeared, now smiling nastily, and a red glow formed around the rim of the cannon. The ion charge reached maximum potential, and the A. I. switched to a targeting program, tracking the ship like a hunter tracking a deer. It almost fired…

… and a shot from the _A. S. Eclipse_'s secondary mass driver reduced the cannon and the asteroid it was built on into a cloud of finely ground powder. G7602 didn't have time to rerun its computations and check for errors before it suddenly no longer existed. The dreadnought blasted past, continuing on into the eerie depths of space, heading for its final target. Earth.

**I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the best at building up. Stick with me, I promise it gets better.**

**-Ignabar**


	3. The Fall of Sailor V

**Warning: contains seriously OOC Sailor Venus. I've never actually read 'Codename: Sailor V'…**

Minako sat on her roof at night and stared up at the sky. The stars were especially clear that night over Minato, sparkling prettily through the haze of smog that hung over Tokyo. When she squinted, Minako could even see the bright and slightly red dot of Venus hanging high in the heavens. The red planet was almost indistinguishable from the stars that surrounded it, but the Senshi of Love and Beauty had spent enough nights staring out of her window and through telescopes to easily spot her patron planet.

She wondered at the wreck her life had become. At first, it was like a dream come true. After all, what little girl _wouldn't_ want to become a magical girl, fighting supernatural enemies beyond the law and championing such sickeningly pastel ideals as love and justice? But the thrill wore off pretty fast. Minako Aino's social life was falling into tatters as the normally flighty and distracted girl became even more distracted and moody.

Sailor V wasn't faring much better. After killing Pandora with her crescent beam, the fight against the Dark Agency promptly went downhill. Not on the public front, because with every new victory and reported sighting of the masked vigilante, Sailor V's fame grew. No, it was Minako who was suffering underneath. Even with thousands of memories of killing from her previous life at Magellan castle, the scent of blood and death left a sickening taste in her mouth. That night, she had put on her best act yet and walked about in a daze until her family and Artemis had fallen asleep. Then she vomited in the upstairs toilet.

The crescent beam didn't even have the decency of providing a clean death; none of abilities in the ridiculous arsenal that was the Sailor Venus Magical Pen. It was either a completely harmless roundhouse kick, or immediately upgraded to a frightening dismemberment or disembowelment by way of the chainsaw-esque Love-Me chain, the fleshmelting ray of energies her compact produced, or some equally horrible means of death that splattered her enemy's entrails everywhere.

Sometimes, Minako wondered what was worth fighting for anymore. The police couldn't handle supernatural problems, according to her ever-reliable companion Artemis, but Minako had a nagging suspicion that Artemis was full of it. None of the Dark Agency's minions or leaders had yet had any kind of defense against bullets, so the men in blue down at the koban could easily just shoot them with regular ol' guns. At least that way there'd only be a _little_ blood…

She felt queasy again, but pushed it back down. Why couldn't the people of Japan just protect themselves? Sure, she had magical powers that Nihon didn't, but the Moon Kingdom's fall was directly because of irresponsible use of magic (At least, that's how Minako traced it, from the patchwork version of events Artemis had given her. Beryl's revolt had nearly no support from the gentry, until she used magic to summon a _demon from the sun and endless legions of life-sucking monsters from another dimension_. Benefit of the doubt, then?). They'd learn, given time. Magic wasn't to be toyed with, especially not by adolescent girls worrying over puberty, academics, and boys. Why throw life-and-death decisions in there unnecessarily?

A freak meteor detached from the cosmic swarm of lights and streaked across the sky. Minako rolled over slowly and moved to climb back through her window, but Artemis was in the way. Sitting inexorably on the window sill, staring out into the distance with a glazed look on his face. "Hello," he said quietly. "Were you looking for something too?" The white cat never met her eyes.

"Artemis, I need to go to bed," Minako insisted tiredly. "Get out of my window." Her pet cat either didn't hear her, or didn't listen, because he only shifted his dazed gaze to her. "I was looking for Luna," he said, "but I didn't see her. Maybe the capsule malfunctioned, and she froze to death in outer space." He shuddered. "Sorry for bothering you, Mina." The cat started to move, and stopped. The meteor that had just appeared was growing steadily larger and larger, descending towards Earth.

"Looks like we've got company," Minako said, glad of the distraction. "I'll intercept, you stay here and keep, uh, looking for Luna." She slipped off of the roof and ran off into the darkness, chasing the gradually growing shape of the meteor.

XXX

The crater was as wide as a football field, made in the centre of some trash dump out in the boondocks. Sailor Venus stopped briefly at the top of the hill, waiting for the dust to clear. When it did, the assorted scrap metals and plastics, outdated technology and worthless junk had been flattened to near-perfect smoothness. In the middle was a silver blob, shining with a suspicious blue light. The Senshi of Love clambered down the melted-smooth surface of a broken refrigerator and worked hard not to fall over the rest of the way down. _'Like an ice rink, but sharper,'_ she mused as she picked her way closer to the dropship.

Up close, Minako deduced that the ship was an advance party. The featureless chrome surface of the ship was still slightly hot from falling out of lower orbit, but the landing ramp was down regardless. _'Against regulations,'_ the memory bubbled up out of nowhere; it was illegal to enter or exit a dropship for twenty minutes or so, giving the engine cooling system time to cool down the ship's skin.

Gathering her courage, Sailor Venus shouted, "I am Sailor Venus, guardian of this planet! Please exit your ship slowly, with your hands in sight!" She swallowed nervously and adjusted her mask, listening as the sounds of footsteps echoed out of the interior. It looked a bit like a scene from Star Trek; which, following Star Trek logic, meant that Sailor V would get an easy first kill. Red shirt effect, right?

Sadly, one does not get to the end of the story alive by trying to outsmart the narrator.

"Henshin!" someone said loudly, and burst of light spilled into the junkyard, illuminating the whole, twisted place as though it were midday. Sailor Venus shielded her eyes with her hand, waiting until the light faded. Out from the ship emerged a woman, wearing an elaborate black sailor fuku with red trimmings. An elaborate mask covered her eyes, much like Sailor Venus' own, and her elbow-length gloves were fingerless. This new Senshi came down the ramp, long red hair spilling unhindered down her shoulders and waving restlessly in the breeze.

"I know you're out there, Sailor," she said imperiously, sweeping her gaze around until she saw the slightly dumbfounded Sailor Venus staring up at her in surprise. "Welcome to the Earth Kingdom, sovereign dominion of the Moon Kingdom. I'm-"

The new Sailor waved her hand dismissively, cutting Sailor Venus off. "I heard you the first time, no need to repeat yourself. Hasn't the Earth Kingdom fallen by now?" she asked with a slight trace of confusion.

"Yeeeeees," Sailor Venus said apprehensively, "but aren't you the reincarnation of a Sailor Senshi?" The woman shook her head. "I am a Senshi, but I'm not reincarnated. Tell me more about this planet, then. If this is not Terra, we will simply move on the next planet and-"

"No, no, this is Earth! Wait a minute, which Senshi are you? My memories may be hazy, but I certainly don't remember anyone like you from the Silver Millenium…"

The woman's mouth curled in distaste. "I'd image you wouldn't have. I am Sailor Andromeda, Senshi of Light and Justice. I represent Andromeda in diplomatic affairs, and I am here on orders to arrest the Senshi of Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto."

"I can't let you do that," Sailor Venus said, already preparing for the inevitable fight. "I will not allow you to tear apart the defenseless civilian population of Japan in search of my friends. Return to your solar system or face the consequences."

Of course it was consequences. Sailor Andromeda jumped casually off the landing ramp and snap-kicked Venus in the chin. Her head snapped back, and Venus went crashing backwards, coming to a stop in the remains of an old television. Sufficiently pissed off, Venus stood up and pulled a shard of glass out of the small space between her gloves and fuku armor, grimacing in pain.

"Is that the best you got?" It was hardly an idle boast; the fuku armor could take plenty of damage. Andromeda pulled her magic weapon out of malletspace, a long and wickedly spiked chain tipped with morningstars on either end, and spun it in two wide repeating arcs. "You think ya' can take it?" Andromeda quipped, releasing one end and slashing at Venus' face.

The Senshi of Love hurriedly pulled her belt off and deflected the enemy weapon with her own chains. Before Andromeda could pull back, Venus turned the block into a tightening spin as she gauged the right trajectory. Throwing the belt, the Love-Me chain whipped through the air and encircled Andromeda's waist, cinching one arm to her side and squeezing painfully. Snarling in anger, the alien Senshi drew her own chain weapon into a helicopter swirl overhead and used the weighted tips to keep balance.

Sensing weakness, Sailor Venus threw a haymaker intended for Andromeda's jaw, but the other fighter pulled back slightly and _kicked her in the wrist_. The spinning motion of the chain held her aloft against the force of the high kick, and Venus' forearm and hand went numb. The chain came at her again, the onehanded Sailor swiping with lethal accuracy, forcing Venus completely on the defensive.

She pulled out her compact and shouted "Crescent Beam!" The spray of laser light seared a black mark on the ground when the first shot missed, but Venus realigned her left arm so that she could make strafing runs at Andromeda with the weapon. The first pass, Sailor Andromeda avoided by jumping five feet straight up, but the second time, Andromeda didn't move at all. The beam just _bent_, a bit to the left, and refused to come any closer to the grinning Senshi of Light.

"Nice try," she said mockingly, and threw the Love-Me chain back at Venus. Even as it fell through the air to her hand, it stiffened into a sword, and Venus brought the new weapon to bear against the spinning chains. To her frustration, Andromeda knocked every blow aside with the mobile shield-weapon, and Venus was hard-pressed to parry the stinger-like blows from the tips of the chains. One sneaked past the chain sword and tore her arm open at its vulnerable point, and Venus used the resulting adrenaline to bring the sword _up_ directly between Andromeda's hands, knocking the chains into the shadowy junkyard night.

"In the name of-AAAAGH!" Venus screamed. As soon as her hands were free, Andromeda aimed both her index fingers, jumping an ungodly distance to cross the gap between them and landing on Venus' chest. A flash of light from both hands directly into Venus' retinas left the Senshi stunned and blind. Andromeda's momentum left her sitting on her fallen opponent, and she capitalized by casually throttling Venus into unconsciousness.

Slinging Minako's unconscious body over her shoulder, Sailor Andromeda went back into her dropship and left, taking the penultimate guardian of Sailor Moon with her.

**I was trying for a Sailor with originality, one who didn't have some kind of overwhelmingly awesome ability like gravity or something, so I came up with light. Specifically, Sailor Andromeda can influence light somewhat, and generate unlimited amounts of the stuff from her skin, but that's it. Just to clarify. Let me know if it needs something. Oh god, my parents used to create Senshi for fun when they were kids, and now I…**

**_Merde._**

**-Ignabar**


	4. Gate Open Blast!

"… in other news, citizens reported seeing a shooting star becoming dangerously large last night, eyewitnesses say that this object may have crashed in the Minato ward. A junkyard was found later this morning-"

"Konatsu, turn the damn radio off, we're going shopping." Ukyo strapped on a bandolier of what appeared to be grenades and shouldered his massive combat spatula. Konatsu armed herself with the katana from the night before and a KA-BAR, and began stuffing shuriken into her shirt and pants as fast as she could. Ranma watched in morbid fascination as the two restaurateurs prepared for war.

"You bringing anything, Ranko?" Ukyo asked, lacing up his boots and tying on a bandana. "It's pretty dangerous out there. It's, what, six kilometers to the mall? At least bring a knife or something." He finished the outfit by opening a drawer underneath the cash register and pulling out a pair of kunai, tossing one to Konatsu, who promptly shoved it in her shirt alongside the shuriken.

"I'm… prepared, thank you. Whenever you're ready?" she said falteringly.

XXX

Isn't it convenient how Jaedite always drew life energy from Minato, directing his semi-nefarious plots at the one place on planet earth equipped to stop him? Obviously, an unhealthy obsession with the Sailor Senshi kept him fighting the magical girls to the bitter end, but even before the Dark Kingdom's borders opened, he had a choice. Invade Nerima, or invade Minato. The dark general took one look at the state of Nerima and turned tail. In hindsight, it was the best choice he'd ever made.

The buildings were in horrible conditions, ranging from storm-damage levels to flat out missing walls, sections of the ceilings, smashed windows and destroyed yards. The streets had bloody great chunks missing from them, like a falling object had driven a furrow in the asphalt and torn the roads apart. Water mains spilled their contents every which way, rendering Nerima a desolate, foggy wasteland.

Ranma found that their new method of travel was almost too unorthodox, even for _this_ warzone. Eschewing roads altogether, the two ninja and their host leaped from rooftop to rooftop in a reckless cross between flight and madness. Ranma briefly wondered if they had a death wish. They lived in the most dangerous suburb she'd ever seen, and that was saying something, and now they were jumping off of roofs.

Ukyo and Konatsu made the death-defying hurdles like they'd been born to, but Ranma lost her footing. Twice, in fact. The first, right after climbing up the drainpipe of someone's house, Ranma misstepped and nearly broke the gutter. The second, after few more insane hops over the desolate city, her foot punched right through a rotten section of the roof and landed painfully on a support beam buried under the shingles.

She sighed and wrenched it free. Could this possibly get any worse?

XXX

Why yes, yes it could. Shopping was a horrifying trial, one that Ranma consistently delegated to Akane or one of his subordinates, and now she remembered why. Konatsu and Ukyo dithered over the styles of clothing, prices, trying on new things and generally behaving like a pair of twelve-year-olds who'd been given credit cards without understanding the concept of 'money in, money out.'

All that was certainly _non-grata_ after millennia of solitude, especially since it all just painfully jabbed the memory of Ranma's late wife in her ribs like a sharp stick. The mall was nearly empty, with only a few store clerks making themselves as obscure as possible and one or two other shoppers, so Ranma politely excused herself after having her sizes taken and a uniform measured out to head to the back of the mall for a guilty habit. She excused it as smoking, but the reality was a bit different.

The Joketsuzoku tribe of Amazons in Quinghai were Ranma's adoptive tribe, back when the Earth Kingdom was fragmented and little clans held reign over Europe and Asian with martial skill and élan alone. The Joketsuzoku matriarch Ti Lung was actually Ranma's sensei in Wu Shu and some of the softer arts, and her daughter… was certainly a party animal. Ranma actually lost track of the number of times he'd declined or purposefully turned down a challenge from her, for fear of Akane's retribution.

The Amazon's also cultivated a certain herb, which, when burned and the fumes inhaled, produced a mild euphoric effect. A distant relative of cannabis, the cigarette-like rolls of leaves were Ranma's way of dealing with stress in her life, and she had several tonnes of the stuff stored in her weaponspace. Nearly half of it evaporated in the week after Jusenkyo.

Reaching a secluded spot by the truck loading zone behind a supermarket, Ranma gleefully withdrew one of the stubby rolls, and immediately realized that she didn't have a lighter. This put her in an even more foul mood as she stalked off to find someone who could lend a flame.

Which was how she came to…

"Gimme your wallet! Now!"

The man had the desperate air of someone who hadn't eaten in days, a five o'clock shadow, and ragged clothing. Oh, and a gun. Couldn't forget the nondescript firearm he was currently pointing at the irate Ranma Saotome in his demand for money. "I said, gi-"

"I told you, I don't have any. I left it all with my friends. Give up and go home," she said evenly. "Really. Just put the gun down, and go away." She bounced nervously on the balls of her feet.

"You think I'm stupid? Pull out your goddamn money or I'll put a bullet in your brains!" You might be wondering, justifiably so, where on earth this man got a weapon. After all, restrictions on firearms in Japan are extraordinarily tight and shipping ports are heavily policed for that sort of thing. The way this man got hold of his weapon was quite by accident. Ryoga Hibiki, Nerima resident and legendary lost boy never entered or left Japan by ways that anyone could find, and frequently carried and sold 'souvenirs' from men he'd defeated. Including guns. Coincidently, the previous owner of the revolver's final moment's in its possession acted out much like these ones.

In a matter of seconds, several things happened in quick succession.

Ranma saw the man's index finger tighten on the trigger of the revolver, possibly in response to something behind her, and she slowly reached for a purse that wasn't there. The temperature in the empty parking lot dropped noticeably, and the blue of Ranma's irises changed shades somewhat as she reached for her most deadly weapon…

Emotion and subjectivity dropped away, and the world snapped into perfect clarity. With a sort of detached viewpoint, Ranma jumped the space between the two combatants, at a speed that to her seemed like falling through thick tar. The gun swung around, and just as expected the man's wrist came in at just the right angle that Ranma could brutally smack it away, throwing her other arm out for balance.

The gun fired slower that Ranma remembered they had. She reasoned that the technology was to blame. Bullets were deadlier than lasers, but a whole lot easier to block or dodge. The only shot fired went wide, tearing a path through the pavement harmlessly. The man's eyes widened almost comically slowly, as if he was only just seeing that he was completely outclassed. Ranma finished the maneuver with a snap kick to the chest.

The man rocketed backwards into a convenient wall, managing to remain conscious for a brief moment before slumping. His head hung at an awkward angle. Ranma calmly frisked him until she found a lighter, snapped it open, and lit the drug.

Ukyo's mouth fell open in shock. She resolved right then to never, _ever_ piss Ranko off.

XXX

"Where the hell am I?" Minako shouted. She was… somewhere. The room was a tasteful green, with a western-style bed and a bookcase on two of the walls, a painting in oils depicting a black hole devouring a dying star, and a mahogany door. Bereft of her compact and pen, Sailor Venus was tantalizingly out of reach, and even the door was open. But every time she tried to leave, a powerful repelling force knocked her on her rear.

"Come on, show yourselves!" she screamed again. "Fight me for real, you cowards!" When the didn't get anything, she tried a new approach. "On what charges am I being detained?"

The figure of a man, translucent and wearing a shimmering blue kimono, appeared on the bed. It was a hologram, representing someone else presumably too busy to meet the Princess of Venus in person.

"Greetings," it said with a slight mechanical inflection. "I am the artificial intelligence of this dreadnaught. Welcome aboard the _Eclipse_. I am Chain." It paused briefly, then continued. "You are being detained for participation in the use of lethal force on Janus, via Death Reborn Evolution. Intergalactic treaties have deemed the use of magical and technological weapons of mass destruction to be war crime offences."

Minako snorted. "Yeah, why don't I just kick your ass, then get the heck out of here?"

"Negative. You do not possess the strength necessary to exit this cell without outside aid."

"Some prison cell you have here. Plushest place I've ever been stuck."

The man would have been offended, if he were capable of being offended. "This ship was not commissioned with a brig. You are currently in the first mate's quarters, modified to contain prisoners."

"You sure know how to decorate around here," Minako said appreciatively. "Listen, can I talk to that other Senshi? Whatshername, Andro…"

"Sailor Andromeda will grant audience in _two_hours_. Please, make yourself comfortable." Chain disappeared. Minako sighed and pulled a copy of some trashy romance off the shelf, resigning herself to another couple hours of solitude.

XXX

**Sorry about the weird ending here. **


	5. Jaedite in Carbonite!

**No, V is _not_ for 'Vendetta'! V is for… never mind. This chapter is presented to you in BACKSCRATCH!**

XXX

Ranma, in his male form, and wearing his old matte black body armor, was standing in a storage shed he'd rented out not twenty minutes ago, staring at the conundrum presenting itself. A few meters tall, made of some kind of mineral enhanced with suppressant magic, Ranma had recently come into possession of the glassy tomb of…

"Jaedite. Wish we could've met again under more favourable circumstances," Ranma remarked dryly to the inanimate hunk of matter. The only other thing in the room was an old 8-cylinder gas engine, rusting away in the corner. A relic of the previous occupant. Ranma sat down, letting the metal spikes on his forearms carve neat gouges in the dirt.

_'How can I thaw my old buddy out, here?'_ Ranma thought. _'There has to be something I can… facts. Gotta use the ol' noggin. Let's see, the stuff is magic sustained, without it the whole prison will fall down around Jaedite's ears. So, reversing magic… not really my thing. Simply, I'm gonna need…'_

* * *

_/Earlier.../_

* * *

"Hey, Nephrite! Wha'tcha guys been up to?"

The Dark General frowned at the intruder in his office. "What do you wa- Ranma?" he said, mildly surprised. The last time they'd met was before the fall, in some bar on Earth. Nephrite and Jaedite, then part of Prince Whatshisname's protection detail, were veterans, and so was Ranma. It was this unspoken law that the warriors drifted together, to tell stories of fighting glory. And to bitch. Nephrite was pretty good at bitching.

"The one and only!" Ranma said, in a falsely cheery voice. "Listen, can I ask a favour? For old time's sake?"

"Very well," Nephrite said, dropping his pen, "what the hell do you want this time?"

"I hear you've got this chunk o' carbonite with a wasting hunk of JAEDITE INSIDE! Seriously, why haven't you got him out yet?"

Nephrite sighed tiredly. "We can't, you imbecile. Beryl did the honours herself, and no amount of countercurse will work. I tried, Malachite tried, Zoicite… actually just laughed at Jaedite for a bit and then got stoned. Point is, he's screwed. You can't even use mana. Going to hang him on a wall?"

Ranma smiled thinly. "Much as Jaedite would look lovely facing the veranda, I think I'll take a crack at it myself. I'm in need of his assistance, and his _unique_ mindset for the next task."

Nephrite looked around warily, as if a micro spy-youma was going to crawl under the door, or maybe if Zoicite was going to smash through the window like the maniac he was. Then he leaned over the desk and said in a confidential whisper, "I can move him. Tomorrow, some of the maintenance can take the statue, and I'll move it to a storage unit. Here," Nephrite took out a notepad and frantically scribbled down an address.

"Thank you, for your assistance," Ranma said politely.

"Any time, Saotome. Call me, we can go out for a beer sometime."

* * *

_/No, no, before that!/_

* * *

Ranma's teeth ground involuntarily in his head. The Sailor-fucking-Senshi, even after they were _supposed_ to have been blown to holy heck, were screwing with his life. Like, everyone who got nuked by him laid down and _died_, but apparently this Metaria wasn't thorough enough. Oh, look at me, I'm a sentai magical girl, and I don't know when to bite the dust. I think I'll go gossip with my _cat_ about _boys_ while my _empire falls to shit!_

The analogy reminded his companion of the Burning of Rome. While the wooden houses blazed with the fury of hell, Nero sat in his suite, playing the fiddle. She wasn't there, _pre se_, but the rumors sure got around. "Ranma, I really don't think _anyone_ can survive asphyxiation, and Sailor Moon isn't an exception. She died, trust me."

"Then explain," Ranma ground out, "why she just, _just_ ran by outside the shop, screaming about love and justice? Hmm, Cologne?"

The withered elder of the Joketsuzoku regarded the collapsed form of Ranma with some measure of fear. What she was about to say could very likely enrage him to the point that not even the relaxing and restraining pressure points could hold him.

"I think that Serenity sealed the entire Dark Kingdom with some of her power. The last of it…" she swallowed hard and did her best to meet Ranma's burning sapphire eyes, "Serenity reincarnated the Senshi to prepare for the upcoming threat."

_'And you,'_ she added silently.

XXX

The street was empty of civilians, and the only people in the Nekohanten were unusually adept at playing the game 'Ignore what's going on two feet away,' so Ranma's roar of indignation and the subsequent brief struggle with Cologne went largely unnoticed.

"YOU BASTARDS!" Ranma screamed. "FUCKING LIARS, YOU FUCKING HYPOCRITES-"

Cologne backed up in alarm as Ranma fought through the induced muscle fatigue with sheer hatred. Thinking quickly, she drove the end of her staff into a relatively unknown point between Ranma's eyes and Saotome dropped like a stone.

She hopped off the stool, grabbing Ranma by the collar, and splashed him with cold water on the way out.

* * *

_/Wait, how did we get here?/_

* * *

"What you want eat?" Shampoo said, not bothering to pour on the charm. After all, both of them were girls. Of course, neither of them knew the true gender of the other, but technicalities were for waitresses armed with gaydar. "Our specials-"

"Cologne?" Ranma said in astonishment. "What are you doing here?" Ukyo raised an eyebrow at 'Ranko', who in turn stared at the flustered Xian Pu. This girl had the gall to compare her to _her_?

"How you know great-grandmother?" Shampoo said suspiciously.

"Great… Oh man, that's great!" Ranma said, snickering. The light giggle soon became a full blown roaring laugh, slamming her fists weakly on the plastic table surface. "Gra-grandmother, yeah, that's rich! Wow," she choked out, almost out of breath. "She's a Great-grandmother now?"

* * *

_/I just know I'm forgetting something.../_

* * *

Ranma's eyes went wide at the sight of something she thought she'd never see again. _Akane_. She was wading through a sea of battered and bruised athletes, barring her way towards the school. Every judicious stroke of her hammer felled another attacker, until all that remained was some kendoist.

"My beauticious tigress! Shower me with your-"

Whatever Kuno expected to be showered by was cut off as Ranma, recognizing the tell-tale signs of some player hitting on her wife, dispatched him with a swift uppercut to the chin. Kuno sailed backwards, not entirely aware what had happened between _beholding_ and _pain_. Then he hit a wall, went right through, and promptly lost importance.

Ranma turned his attention to what was _next_ on her list, greeting her presumed-dead wife in a manner befitting their long separation. With a hug. She decided at the last second to go with something slightly more chaste than her original, spur-of-the-moment plan.

Akane Tendo, still in full-on Kuno mode, reacted accordingly to what she perceived as an act of pervertedness: she swung her mallet down and nearly fractured her husband's skull.

"Oh," she said, realizing her mistake, "I thought you were a boy." She flounced off, leaving Ranma to bleed in her own impact crater. Her fanatically honed reflexes had failed, and that was shocking enough to warrant unconsciousness. A concussion helped too.

Efhufhesu A little bit later…

"How ya feeling?" Ukyo asked. Ranma groaned in agony and rolled over, determined to put the morning's happenings down to a coincidence.

"That bad, huh? Don't worry, Akane is really a sweet girl. Just a violent maniac." _Whoa_. That did _not_ come out right. "I'll take you out for Chinese food, as an apology."

Ranma internally thanked the boy's kindness, not really knowing what China was, but grateful for the free food nonetheless. Pay was slow in coming at Ucchan's, because the smarter Nerimians were almost always occupied with surviving. Plus, Konatsu had no business sense; and any time Ukyo left for any reason, Ecchan's lost 30% of its daily revenue.

_'A change of venue would be nice,'_ she reflected, before popping another aspirin and privately hoping for some bloody peace.

* * *

_/Ah, good. You've caught up./_

* * *

_'A vacuum,'_ Ranma realized. _'I need to suck the magic out of this thing, so I'll need an industrial strength engine and a power receptacle. Hey, the magic can power the engine, make a nice little loop there.'_ He regarded the engine. _'Alright, now I just need a receptacle.'_

The only thing that came to mind was…

_'No! Not that frickin' gem again! AAAGH, DAMNIT! Karma bought you this one, Saotome. Time to go rip a priceless jewel off of one of the most dangerous women in existence.'_

**If you're wondering, don't! It makes life easier! Thank you, for your continued patronage.**


	6. Round 1, Fight!

**I wrote this while listening to the OST for VVVVVV. It's called, surprise surprise, PPPPPPP. **_**Aimez!**_

XXX

It all lead up to this. For the sake of one of his oldest friends, Ranma had set up the most daring scenario of his career. Careful planning and preparation had gone into this, as well as a good deal of psychological profiling for the previous incarnations of the Senshi and a liberal amount of kerosene. Ranma had been delighted to find that the pyrophilic stuff was much less expensive than the unleaded fuel he'd wanted to buy. Things were just cheaper now that those ridiculous tariffs on extragalactic imports were gone.

Not that there _were_ any extragalactic imports anymore, seeing as how Janus was flattened by the steamroller that was Sailor Saturn. Earth had regressed to this backwater little funk hole, which delighted Ranma. Mostly as an opportunity to throw it in Serenity's face. Not like the chance came very often; she was dead. But you spat in your captor's eye and died on your feet.

Ranma timed his attack perfectly to coincide with a youma attack on some downtown street in Minato. He watched like a shadow from the roof of the nearest building as Sailors Moon, Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter ran around blindly while the extradimensional parasites caused ridiculous amounts of property damage, until a cat shouted at them from the sidelines. Ranma assumed it was Luna: only she could be so annoying and sound so loud with such a tiny little body.

Sailor Moon pulled off one passably effective kick on the nearest grotesque mockery of the fairer sex, and whipped her tiara off. The band of metal reshaped into a slightly more deadly, aerodynamic form and its internal threat selection subroutine neatly picked off the two youma. One was decapitated, but the other lost an arm before Sailor Mars tacked a sheet of paper- _'An ofuda?'_- to her back, and the youma disintegrated.

Ranma steeled himself. An attack of this magnitude against the Queen's Shield, even if they were a bunch of untrained little girls, would have been suicide under any other circumstance. Fortunately, he had the 'untrained little girls' thing going for him. Inhale. Exhale. Ranma watched experimentally as his view of the world became panoramic, his breath forming little crystals on the air. Each was individual, unique, beautiful.

Across Tokyo, Cologne looked up from the cash register and out the window into the darkness, and sent out a silent prayer for her friend.

Ranma walked with a fluid, feline grace to the edge, and just… walked off.

XXX

"Another evil has been defeated, by the powers of Love and Justice!" Sailor Moon exclaimed, tentatively kicking the headless youma's prone form.

"We sure showed them!" Sailor Jupiter agreed enthusiastically. "We didn't even have to wait for Tuxedo Kamen this time! Take _that_, Dark Kingdom!"

"Yes, bravo, well done," said a voice colder than a nuclear winter. "I saw the whole thing, and colour me impressed." In truth, the only one of them with even a modicum of usefulness was Mercury, and that was for her so-called tactical superiority. Which was a major factor in the first step of The Plan.

"Who are you?" Sailor Moon lead, somewhat confused. Even with her limited exposure to the public, anyone who approached the Senshi either said something along the lines of "Who are you?", "Can I have your autograph?", or "Prepare to die!"

"I have a proposition for you," Ranma began. His armor was running on a third of a charge, so most of his defenses were going to have to be his own. The low, dark metal spines running down the back and the ridged spikes on his forearms were certainly intimidating enough. He'd left the helmet down on purpose, as the visor was somewhat vision obscuring, and the only one with a gas attack would very shortly be out of the game.

"Yeah? What?" That was Sailor Mercury. She stood off of the car fender she'd been sitting on an approached Ranma cautiously. The visor on her headband was down, and a rapid series of kana was filtering down her vision. Even from his distance, Ranma could pick out a backwards portrait of himself, and the red warning light that jumped on as soon as she got within his reach. Far, far too late.

With one hand, Ranma hit her in the forehead with the palm of his hand. Sailor Mercury's head rocked back, and even though Ranma purposefully left an opening of several seconds for a response, nothing happened. _'If this were for real, I'd be dead a dozen times over by now. This is gonna' be a cakewalk.'_

He finished with a rather brutal twin strike to both of Sailor Mercury's temples, and the Senshi dropped like a stone. Ranma stepped delicately over her body and surveyed the remaining Sailors Moon, Mars and Jupiter. The cat had slunk away.

"What the heck did you do that for?" Sailor Mars said, enraged, but her tone betrayed a note of fear. Sailor Jupiter strafed left, just out of Ranma's field of vision. He had to give her credit, the girl had at least some skill. But not enough, and Sailor Mercury was right there. Almost as good as a hostage, and Jupiter knew it.

"Simple, my dears," Ranma said condescendingly, directing his words to Sailor Moon. Out of all of them, Sailor Moon was the physically weakest, but more importantly, the easiest to needle the shit out of. "I require something of you, and the easiest way to get it is to search you while you, ah, sleep."

Sailor Moon shuddered at the possible implications of his words. They were true, but easily misconstrued. "You-you-PERVERT!" she shouted, eyes lighting up with rage. "It is wrong to peep on young girls while they sleep, and I will not condone it! In the name of the moon, I punish you!" Ordinarily, Sailor Mars would privately laugh at the idiocy of some of Usagi's impromptu speeches, but she firmly agreed with the current sentiment.

Extending a finger, Sailor Mars conjured a great flaming ball of hydrogen and lobbed it at Ranma. At the height of its trajectory, it lengthened like a rolled piece of dough and snaked towards the last Saotome. With ease of practice (and memories of the fight with a certain Phoenix King with suspiciously identical ability) Ranma sidestepped the projectile and laughed mockingly.

"Is that the best you can do, Guardians? I've had better sparring matches with my grandmother!"

Sailor Jupiter picked a spot directly behind Ranma and eschewed her only advantage, magic, for some kind of Hail-Mary knockout punch. Her mistake was shouting "Sailor Jupiter Punch!" as she did so. For Ranma, it was as good as a telegraph. Before Sailor Jupiter even finished the runup, he ducked down and spun in a circle, bringing the ill-fated attack to an ignoble end as Jupiter tripped over his ankle and went sprawling.

"Now, now, play nice with the little ones," Ranma said sternly, stepping to one side and deftly plucking the Mercury Computer from Mercury's weaponspace. Insurance, in case the goading didn't suffice. "I really must be getting on, so if you would oblige by laying down so that I might get on with things?"

"You're so gonna get it!" Sailor Mars said angrily, reading another fireball, and Sailor Moon fingered her tiara menacingly. Well, as menacingly as one can stroke a piece of toddler's jewelry. "I will-HEY!" she yelled as Ranma bullrushed the standing Senshi and jumped. He landed on Sailor Moon's head, and gracefully transferred to Mars, before hopping back down and taking off like a gunshot into the distance.

Sailor Moon turned and gave chase, with Sailor Mars hot on her heels and Sailor Jupiter close behind. Luna emerged from her hiding place and inspected the inside of Sailor Mercury's visor. Pawing the technology off her head, Luna scanned down the article and hissed in anger. She had _hoped_ that problem had been dealt with, but apparently solitary confinement wasn't harsh enough for _Ranma Saotome_.

XXX

Tuxedo Mask went to intercept Ranma at the next crossroad, but something stopped him. The moon's light was just bright enough to make out the form of a woman sitting on the edge of the next building's roof.

"Hey there," she greeted with false cheeriness, standing up to reveal her black fuku armor, red trimming shining with a dull, bloody light in the pale moonlight. "You must be Tuxedo Mask, ne?"

"Yes madam, that is whom you have encountered. Pray tell," he said, slightly distracted, "if you are one of the Sailor Senshi, do you know of the whereabouts of the Maboroshi No Ginzuishou?"

"I'm a Senshi, yeah," Sailor Andromeda confirmed, "and I know where that blasted diamond is, but no. I'm kinda looking for it too. Perhaps we could come to a truce?"

"I would find that agreeable, save that your intents seem less than fair," Tuxedo Kamen said with a touch of arrogance and disdain. "Inform me of its location, or I shall be forced to retrieve the knowledge by means you may not enjoy."

Well of course she wouldn't enjoy being beaten to a pulp, but such was life. Tuxedo Kamen flipped his grip on his cane and settled into a backwards ready stance. Sailor Andromeda cleared the gap between roofs easily and charged. The battle was over in less than ten seconds.

First, Kamen swung the cane at Andromeda's head, in tandem with a low kick designed to disorient and unbalance the new Senshi. It did neither. Instead, Sailor Andromeda grabbed and snapped the cane with one hand, splintering the hardwood with no visible effort, while just shrugging off the kick completely. Tuxedo Kamen backed up quickly, running through the scenario he had in case of head-on conflict with Sailor Moon. It wasn't promising, and mostly relied on psychological warfare and indirect tactics to get through that invulnerable armor.

"You wanna rethink that?" Sailor Andromeda asked cockily, setting her eyes ablaze. The light was just that, light, but to Kamen it looked like the windows to the soul had become a plexiglass barrier, separating him from some terrible inner power. "You find me to be an inferior opponent?" he said with a confidence he didn't really feel. "I will show you the true depth of my skill and determination!"

"Please," Andromeda mocked, "_skill_ and _determination_? Sailor Venus had that and magic, and she wasn't even a decent punching bag."

Tuxedo Kamen forced himself to think rationally. His chances of actually winning the fight were slim, but some degree of fatherly protectiveness towards the bumbling superheroine on the streets below steadied his hand. Discarding the remainder of his cane's former handle off the edge of the roof, he charged.

XXX

Ranma's feet barely touched the ground as he skimmed over the freeway. Somehow, the Sailors were flying in his tracks, negating his speed advantage. Slowing slightly for the curve, Ranma jumped, smashed headlong into the side of a house, and rebounded at a 90˚ angle down the road. Sailor Moon, who was the one steering the bubble of flying girls, took the turn somewhat more gracefully, but Ranma was already on stage two of the fight.

The only two disadvantages he was at were big ones: outnumbered and magically outclassed. While two noncombatants were really only twice as much a burden for their defenders in theory, in practice they tended to support each other rather well. Coupled with the fact that in their previous lives, they were a skilled, cohesive fighting unit, and the excrement was liable to hit the air conditioning.

The other problem was the fuku. Those damn magical armors were tougher than his, almost definitely stronger than what he could dish out. The fluke with Sailor Mercury aside, Ranma doubted he could do any serious damage to the Senshi by himself. Then there were the wild cards, Sailor Venus and Tuxedo Kamen. He had provisions in place, but any more on his plate and Ranma's whole plan was going to fall apart like a house of cards stacked in a hurricane.

The solution would require careful timing, a steady hand, and liberal kung-fu. _That_ he could do.

Ranma, nearing his destination, bounced and spun in a circle, sticking his tongue out at the Sailor Senshi. Landing so hard the tiles beneath his feet cracked, Ranma pushed himself the last few meters into the front doors of Juuban High. _Into_. Taking a page from Cologne's book, Ranma blasted the doors off their hinges with sheer momentum and vanished in the deserted hallways.

XXX

Sailor Moon came to a skidding stop just inside the destroyed front doors of her school and roughly deposited her comrades on the floor.

"Ouch," Mars said, "why ya gotta do that, Meatball Head? We have legs, you know."

"No time!" Sailor Moon said, putting forth a Herculean effort to ignore the classic insult to her hairstyle. "Everybody, split up! I'll take the second floor, Mars, you go left to the science wing, Jupiter go right past administrative. We'll herd this guy back to the language wing. Go!"

Jupiter gave her leader a strange look, but complied nevertheless. Mars didn't speak, just running off and gleefully busting the nearest door off its hinges. "Come out, come out, wherever you are!" she said with gusto, charging nearby air with the burnt smell of ozone. Usagi took the stairs three at a time and began the dual pleasures of searching for an evil-doer and destroying her high school.

XXX

Sailor Mars briefly searched the main offices, the student services, and the records room, but pay dirt was the cafeteria. The door wasn't locked, for a change, and Ranma was just sitting casually on a formica table, watching her expectantly.

"Hello again, Mars," he said in a curiously flat tone. "I see you've grown your hair out again. Didn't I tell you it looked better short? I distinctly remember, but you didn't listen at all. Welcome to a new era, Senshi of Fire."

"… Do I know you?" Mars asked tentatively. Lately, her dreams had become progressively stranger, and no amount of wards would keep the weirdness away. He may have been in one of them, for all she knew, but it wasn't likely.

"I don't know," Ranma confessed, "not anymore. At one time, perhaps, but not now. That's neither here nor there, is it? Submit and give me the crystal."

Sailor Mars wasn't sure whether or not to feel relieved. On the one hand, this guy was just looking for the same thing everyone else was. On the other, he seemed to think that _they_ had it, and seeing as they didn't…

"I can't give it to you," she said, taking a calculated risk. "I'm not able to." Bluffing could buy her time, time enough to get backup. Ranma casually got off the table and strode toward her. "I'm afraid that you don't have much choice in the matter," he said, and lashed out with a kick to her midsection. It was the first time something had been landed on Mars for real, but it didn't hurt at all.

_'This guy's an amateur '_she thought cheerfully. _'One good hit and he'll be down for good!'_ The sparring match began in earnest. Mars tested Ranma's defenses with a few high jabs, and he countered with the flat of his palm. The noise echoed throughout the cavernous cafeteria.

He went into a low capoeira stance, bobbing and weaving under Mars' reach and playfully swatting at her stomach and exposed rump. Shrieking with feminine fury, Mars tried to dogpile the lower fighter, but Ranma just struck upward with his shoulder. Mars gave a satisfying _whoomf_ and staggered back.

Ranma managed to maneuver them into the food preparation area, subtly directing the flow of the one-sided fight until he and Sailor Mars were squashed in between a row of freezers and the oven equipment. It had a dramatic feel to it, like the catwalks on the Death Star. They straightened, and Ranma lowered his guard a tad, inviting a kick to the face. He fell over, feigning hurt, on an oven near the far end.

"Y-you- Ouch!" he said hysterically, as if the burners were still on. Then, in a surprising display of agility for an outclassed fighter, grabbed Sailor Mars' shoulders and flipped the entire length of the space in midair.

"Nya!" he said impishly, miraculously shrugging off all of his former compunctions and disabilities. "Can't catch meeeeeeee!"

Mars growled angrily and slammed her palms together. Fire jumped around her fingers and swirled tightly in a circle. Ranma sniffed, suddenly, like a carbon-monoxide parrot whose number had been called in some forlorn mineshaft, prompting Mars to do the same. By the time she figured out that he'd used the time on the oven to disconnect a gas main, Ranma had thrown himself clear, and it was far too late for the Senshi of Fire.

XXX

Sailor Jupiter head the muffled 'BOOM' from across the school and headed off to investigate. She passed the front entrance again and instinctively turned left to go upstairs, but a dark smudge in her peripheral vision gave her pause. Whirling around, Jupiter searched for the interruption, but it had vanished behind a wall.

Carefully stepping around, Sailor Jupiter found the entrance to the school basement unlocked and open wide, the dim light from bare bulbs filtering up through the gloom. Although it practically screamed 'trap', the light gave Jupiter courage as she descended.

It was darker down there than it originally appeared, but the Soldier of Courage rallied around her memory of Sailor Mercury, lying in the street.

"Welcome, Princess," Ranma said. The door at the top of the stair slammed shut, making Jupiter jump in fright. "I was waiting for you to come." The lights flicked desperately, jumped in brightness. Failed completely. Darkness fell. Instantly, Jupiter could feel the room spinning around her, her sense of direction malfunctioning in the extreme. She could barely tell where the stairs _might_ have been.

It was like suffocating in some kind of giant coffin, blackness wrapping around her like bands of restraining malevolence incarnate. Red spots danced at the corners of Jupiter's vision. A rustle in the dark, and she lashed out blindly at the source, punching the wall full-force. Two knuckles broke, and panic set it.

"Show yourself!" she screamed, her voice cracking. "Where are you!? TURN THE LIGHTS ON!"

Privately, Ranma agreed with the sentiment, but the Soul of Ice kept the paranoia down to a minimum. The sounds of Sailor Jupiter's feet rustling over the cracked and unfinished concrete gave him everything he needed to get around. "No, my dear," he whispered loudly, "I can't do that just yet."

_Smack_. Another wild swing, and Sailor Jupiter cracked a rake in two. "Wh-whe- where are you?" she pleaded, "tell me where you areeeeeee."

"With… pleasure." Ranma said. Reaching out a bit, he flicked the closest bulb on, illuminating him in a lonely spotlight. He kept his head tilted down, letting his hair cover his eyes and keeping his expression hidden. With a strangled cry, Sailor Jupiter punched as hard as she could…

…Ranma jumped two meters straight up to dodge and grabbed hold of one of the ceiling beams…

… and Jupiter buried her fist in the school's switchboard and circuit box. All of the fuses exploded at once as her fingers completed the circuit…

…and her hoarse cries reached upstairs.

XXX

Usagi heard the two explosions and ventured carefully downstairs again, leaving the classrooms upstairs in complete disarray. Sometimes, being Sailor Moon gave her the irresistible desire to destroy stuff in the name of Love and Justice, and the call to trash her school _may_ have distracted her from the primary objective of finding the baddy. He was pretty easy to find after the explosion, though.

Rounding a corner, Sailor Moon stopped dead after seeing her friends lying on the floor, unconscious. Ranma, ignoring her, was pouring a clear, disgusting-smelling liquid out of a container on Sailor Jupiter, Sailor Mars already doused thoroughly with the gasoline. It ran out, and Ranma cheerfully discarded the jug. It made a hollow skittering noise as it spun away.

"Are we ready to capitulate yet?" Ranma asked, stuffing one hand in a pocket.

"Let them go!" Sailor Moon said feebly, her mind spinning at a million miles a second but going nowhere. Like an exercise bike. The memory of _that_ incident derailed her thoughts completely. Usagi subtly looked past Ranma, but the hallway was empty. She decided to stall for time.

"Why would I let them go yet? I don't have what I want yet."

"So what do you want," Usagi asked, "money? Souls? Human energy to fuel your dark master's-"

"The gem." A ball of ice formed in Sailor Moon's stomach. "Wh-what gem?"

"Come on, how can you _not_ know? The source of your powers, the treasure of the throne, the Seat of the Moon Kingdom. Legendary source of the Senshi's power. Ring any bells?"

Something about it was almost comforting. This nutjob was just looking for the same thing everyone else was looking for, the Maboroshi no Ginzuishou. _'Only he thinks _I_ have it,'_ she mused, _'and he's good, too. Where's Tuxedo Kamen?'_ She admitted that relying on the disturbingly accurate timing of Tuxedo Kamen was a bad habit to get into, and now it was biting her in the butt. "I… it's the source of my power?" That was new. Maybe he actually knew what the heck it was.

"You must be joking," Ranma dismissed, pulling out the lighter he had pulled off the drifter. "I've seen you and your mom use that thing to kill so many people I've lost count. Give it to me, or else…" he clicked the lighter on, and Usagi's heart leapt into her throat.

Then, the brilliant, desperate move jumped in her head. He obviously thought _she_ had the Silver Crystal, but if it was so powerful, why didn't she use it?

"I don't have it on me," Sailor Moon bluffed. Normally she couldn't lie worth a damn, but the words tripped off her tongue quickly and easily. Ranma cocked his head to one side and considered, then nodded.

"Right." He shut the lighter and stowed it again. "Well, I still need it. I will be taking your comrades with me, and we will meet again. I think, maybe at the special observatory of the Tokyo tower?" He chose the only famous landmark he knew of. "I will leave your friends somewhere, which I will tell you after you give me the gem. Do we have a deal?"

Sailor Moon gave one last, futile check for Tuxedo Kamen, and came up blank. "If it's between that and killing my friends, I guess I have no choice."

XXX

Sailor Andromeda giggled at the veritable bouquet of roses she held, sitting as she was on the defeated Tuxedo Kamen. "You really need to work on your repertoire," she advised, and Kamen groaned. "You suck at fighting, and these roses are terrible ranged weapons. Your aim is pretty good, so maybe a bow or a gun or something would work better."

Below them, Sailor Moon walked gloomily out of the school and teleported away. "That's my cue!" she said jovially, before doing the exact same thing. Tuxedo lay there, staring miserably at the sky, and didn't move. Maybe he _did_ need a better weapon. Just because he could generate an endless supply of roses didn't mean they had to be _thrown_. Maybe he could make them into a poison supply.

Then he blacked out, just in time to miss Ranma vanish into thin air from the parking lot, along with the two girls slung over his shoulders.

XXX

**To answer your questions, which I know are inevitable, Ranma will not keep the Silver Crystal. As far as I'm concerned, he doesn't even know how to use it. Thanks for reading!**


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